Tim James Is Making Sense

Wonkette declared this the funniest 30 second spot so far this season. And I'm inclined to agree. Take it away, Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James:

James doesn't like it that the state offers drivers license exams in 12 (12!) whole languages. "We're only givin' that test in English, if I'm governor," he promises. Why? To "save money" and because "this is Alabama, we speak English." Take that, legal immigrants who desire to continue follow the rules by paying to obtain a legal license to drive a car but don't know the word for intersection! Shoo!

At the end of the ad he says, "It makes sense." Then there's a long thoughtful(?) piano-filled pause. And then he says, uncertainly, "Does it to you?" Alas, Tim, saying the magical phrase "it makes sense" doesn't make it so.

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I agree with you–the “Henry Ford of Medical Care” in India got me on to that thinking. But this guy definitely doesn’t seem like the type; instead he got himself a hot-button issue that will give him lots of publicity.

I’ve driven through Alabama several times, and let me tell you, there are a lot of immigrants there. I saw boatloads of local Mexican restaurants–not chains–all the way through. I don’t think they’re all being opened by good ol’ boys from Auburn, either.

I actually agree with Tulpa here. I wouldn’t dream of visiting another country without knowing how to accurately say the important stuff like “where’s the embassy?” and “how much to get me out of this ‘infraction’?”

If i was planning on living there, I’d damn sure learn the prevalent language.

That’s just swell for STOP and YIELD signs. But what about NO PASSING ZONE, DO NOT STOP ON TRACKS, ONCOMING TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP, NO TURN ON RED, LEFT TURN SIGNAL, RIGHT LANE MUST TURN RIGHT, and all the other signs that are just black letters on a square white surface?

Tulpa, more often than not, traffic signs are more identifiable by colors and shapes. Do you have to read “go” or “stop” in the English? No, you see green or red and act accordingly. Other essential signs are also easily identified, and those that incorporate numbers do so with arabic numerals–the most widely used symbols for numbers in the world. Pretty easy for all to understand. Besides, if they pass the tests, they know the rules.

Given the fact that the US uses international road signs much less than other countries, it makes perfect sense to require a basic knowledge of English from people driving here. How else would you understand “U TURNS THRU USE LEFT LANE”?

It certainly is an incentive to learn English. Immigrants with foreign licenses and IDPs can drive for up to 3 years before needing a state license.Just get it before you come here.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I…..ing_Permit

I took a driver’s exam for Germany in English and I’d like to stick up for multilingual exams. One doesn’t have to be “fluent” in a language to understand terms like “einbahnstrasse,” “ausgang” or “umleitung”, so as long as someone can translate signs like that into whatever language they speak best, they’d be competent to drive.

Yeah, it’s not so much “learning the language” even as is is “understanding the meaning of a few symbols”. Hell, I can “understand a few symbols” in like 20+ languages if we count programming. 2 doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for the Average Joe.

They might be fucked with those variable construction-alert signs though.

You know, I may be a libertarian, but I’m rather for people paying attention to traffic signals and stuff. Within reason, of course. Mindlessly sitting at a traffic light at 2:00 a.m. on a road without any traffic just ’cause some insane cop might ticket you is bad.

I didn’t phrase that very well. It’s not mindless to want to avoid Mr. Cop. The silliness of it all, though, and the not-so-veiled authoritarianism of it makes me unhappy. Particularly at traffic lights in the middle of the night with no traffic.

In Puerto Rico after 10:00 PM until some time in the morning all red lights are treated as flashing red, or so I’m told. I have a friend who lived there for a number of years and then came back to the mainland and got a ticket for stopping at a red light with no traffic at it and then going through…

“international” signage is entirely pictographic. But lets stick to making just the signs pictographic. I think the license process should prove that you’re intelligent enough to be literate in at least ONE language.

The laughable part is Tim James thinks this non-issue is going to help get him elected, when everyone knows the non-issue Alabamians really care about is the Ten Commandments. But Roy Moore has the monopoly on Bronze Age legal codes.

….There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag….We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people”. ….”This is a nation – not a polyglot boarding house. There is not room in the country for any 50-50 American, nor can there by but one loyalty – to the Stars and Stripes”.

… every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

But I think we may go still further. The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good.

Still processing the insult. To come on a libertarian board and try to pass off that troglodyte fuck, Theodore Roosevelt, as someone worthy of admiration takes either gall or not really being very well informed of what that monster represented.

The problem isn’t that the signs are in several languages. It’s that the written exam – which, I assume, is what James is talking about – and the practical portion that will only be offered in English.

Think about it like this: You’re driving down the road and come to an intersection (that’s what it’s called in English) where the car facing toward you is stopped waiting to make a left turn. They patiently yield to you because you have the right of way. You go through, they proceed when safe behind you and absolutely nothing terrible happens. And during that 10 or so seconds, the driver is talking to his wife in the passenger seat telling her how much he loves her and their children. In Spanish. Or Swahili. Or Esperanto. Who cares. Everything is just peachy.

Now, imagine the same situation but only, this time, the driver’s a drunk redneck who’s yelling in English – uh, well, a dialect of English sufficient for Bridal Dress and Tackle Shop transactions, at least – and he does not yield because he’s drunk and angry and not paying attention and he proceeds into the intersection – a word which, by the way, was in English and meant exactly the same thing in your 10th Grade Geometry class; you didn’t know what it meant then but somehow you’re just better at understanding it on a driver’s exam at probably the exact same year of your life? – and everyone dies.

Does it really matter whether he was saying “Te quiero, mi amor” or “Woman – you talk to me like that in front of the fellers again and I’ll bitch slap you all the way to high heaven!”

I would say that if the government is, in fact, intended to serve the people, then it ought to bend over backwards and make itself available in any number of languages, even if I invented my own and they had to learn it just for me.

No, Timmy, it doesn’t make sense. Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language, especially one outside the Indo-European language family? It’s not like learning to yo-yo. The time it would take to gain fluency to read a full driver’s license exam in another language could be quite long; much much simpler and economically feasible to just translate the key parts of the exam, as being able to drive is a necessity for at least some occupations. Hey Mr. Businessmanrepublican; enacting your measure would mean more immigrants dependent on public transportation for a longer time (and more tax dollars diverted for that), loss of income for immigrants, and a nice-size drain on the economy. Does that make sense to you?

When I moved to Brazil, it never occurred to me not to learn to speak Portuguese, and not for a moment did I expect Brazilian society to adapt to me. Of course, to properly drive in Brazil, one needs to learn profanity first, which I most surely did.

There’s learning to speak English (which I think people should do when coming to this country) and then there’s requiring someone to learn the language well enough to fully understand a driver’s license exam. Two separate issues. You can support the first notion without supporting the second – simply an extra-step state nuisance, and an economic drain as well.

I always demand that my tests be given in Urdu. I don’t speak Urdu, but I enjoy watching them scramble for a translator and I get the pleasure of knowing that some silly liberal, like Katherine Mangu-Ward is footing the bill. Do you think they offer english language drivers tests in Mexico? Just asking.

I am a black Texan and I am 100% for Tim James. I have 2 masters degrees and I am getting ‘bilingual preferred’ thrown in my face when seeking to change employment fields. I sent a donation and I pray that he wins!

What’s your masters degrees in? And what jobs were you applying for? You do realize that many companies do business in other countries or have many clients who speak different languages and in order to obtain and retain their business they might need to have bilingual staffers. Maybe they didn’t hire you because you were black lol.

Well, I’ve been to Alabama and I wouldn’t exactly call it English that those folks were speaking 😉

I think if someone intends to take permanent residence in the U.S. it only makes sense to learn the language. But, I think the driver license issue is really just a smoke screen for the guy’s racist views.

WHAT A LOSER!!!!!!!! IT’S SO SAD HOW MUCH WORK GOD PUT INTO THE HUMAN RACE. THEN YOU HAVE SOME JACKASSES LIKE THIS STILL BREATHING. WOW! TO SAY YOU HAVE FAITH AND FAMILY VALUES. WHAT A JOKE. LLLOOOOOSSSER!!!

Alabama does provide oral tests for people who can’t read (VERY necessary here – I’m from up North, but have lived here for two years. I can assure you, the educational standards down here are virtually nonexistent).

If James thinks this is logical because people need to be able to read road signs – the fact that they give oral tests to illiterate folks kills that argument.